starpunched

[starpunched]

kitty genovese died a virgin

fandom: persona 5 pairing: ryuji sakamoto/goro akechi rating: teen spoilers: oh hell yes

>> Where are Crow and Skull?

Ryuji Sakamoto has his back to the wall of a closet. His hands are on Goro Akechi's waist, and there is a gun in Akechi's right pocket. He's sweating. His mask is off. Close in, and we see him go for the lips.

read on ao3

[starpunched]

and enoch walked with god

fandom: fire emblem: awakening pairings: chrom/grima, past chrom/robin warnings: violent imagery, death, blood, semi-explicit sex, consent issues due to power imbalance, religious overtones

and he was not; for god took him.

In the version of things where Chrom bleeds out, Grima shows some form of pity towards the end. Chrom appreciates having company for the end of the world.

read on ao3 or below the cut:

The world ends with a protracted death rattle. The sky burns, the sea rises, but none of it’s instantaneous. There’s time for a slow build, if there’s anyone left to look upon these wonders and despair. It’s not often, but the Fell Dragon can be generous.

Grima pins Chrom’s soon-to-be-corpse to the Grimleal altar, the red sky reflected on Falchion’s edge. “Don’t play coy,” he says through Robin’s lips. “I already know how much you love me.” Chrom grunts. Blood loss limits him to monosyllables.

Fingers that feel like talons trace the angles of Chrom’s jaw. “Come on,” Grima says. “Be honest about this. You’ve never lied to me before.”

Robin is Grima and Grima is Robin and Chrom has no secrets from either, though maybe he wishes he did. This is all too familiar; him with his back to the ground and Robin bent over him like a kind and loving god. Add in the gaping wound. Add in Grima’s simpering smile. The scene played better without all these complications.

Grima forces a leg between Chrom’s knees and kisses his waiting mouth, sucking face more like a teenager than a rebellious divine. It’s déjà vu on a macro level. Robin is Grima and Grima is Robin so of course the Fell Dragon knows the script from the first time they fucked. Chrom’s rabbit heartbeat, Robin tearing his clothes – yeah, this all seems about right.

“I still hate that you dress like this,” Grima says. The clasps designed to hold Chrom’s cape steady unfasten and roll off the edge of the altar. “We could never have a quickie when you take forty minutes to get undressed.” He unsheathes Robin’s stained Levin sword and slices the fabric open – gently, as if another cut would make a difference. Chrom’s head lolls sideways. Blood trickles from the side of his mouth.

True love is all this still giving him an erection.

Falchion clatters to the ground when his belt comes off, Grima working him out of his cotton cocoon. Slowly, gently, even lovingly. Robin’s fingers pausing to trace his scars.

“See?” Grima says, squeezing Chrom’s hard-on with Robin’s hand. “I told you. This body, you love it too much to bear.” It’s not that, Chrom wants to say. It’s Robin he loves; Robin with his thin smile and clever words and selfless devotion, Robin the person, not the shell. “Rrghgf,” he says, and then he’s lightheaded from doing that much.

It’s awful, but Grima’s – Robin’s – laugh still sounds like sunshine to him. Robin’s laugh, Robin’s lips, Robin’s bedroom eyes lined up in two rows of three. Gods. This is just so close to being romantic. Picture Robin with a regular face and both their bodies intact. While he’s at it, picture them both wearing rings.

Grima kisses down the length of Chrom’s chest, pressing his lips against Chrom’s mangled sternum. He comes up bloody, smiling. Chunks of entrails cling to his jawline where Chrom used to kiss him, and he’s still so lovely it hurts.

“He really did love you,” Grima says. He straddles Chrom just below where he killed him, grinds his hips down where Chrom is still whole. “You loved him too, right?” A bubble of blood pops by Chrom’s mouth. Yes, it says, I really did. I really do, still.

Besides the warm blood and stiff dick, Chrom might as well be a corpse. Or a sex doll. Whatever it is Grima’s hoping for here. With one foot in the grave he can’t touch Grima, can’t reach up and grab his hand/ass/thighs like Robin used to want. But he’s good enough, apparently, good enough for Grima to shed his coat like a butterfly shrugs off a chrysalis. One-to-one reenactment. Right down to unfurling his wings.

“Help me,” Grima tells him. Chrom can’t find a way to say no.

Grima’s wings, long and feathered, they frame Chrom’s body like a cage. He smiles. Chrom’s rabbit heart flutters. Then Grima’s frotting against him and peeling off Robin’s pants and yeah, Chrom remembers how it goes after this. They weren’t so desperate the last time this happened, but they weren’t so dead and doomed either. Accepting your mortality isn’t the worst way there is to get off.

Between all the blood and the sweat, they stick together wherever their skin happens to meet. Grima grinding down on Chrom’s cock and dragging his nails down Chrom’s chest, he makes Chrom waste some of his last cloying lifeforce on gasping for breath. Beneath him, Chrom wonders if his death or his orgasm will come first.

Maybe he almost gets there. Seconds away from blowing his load, and that’s when his heart finally stops. Edging on a grander scale.

Grima kisses him. Chrom forgets hypotheticals. Grima kisses him, and Chrom’s thrown back to a cold night in Regna Ferox with him and Robin cuddled for warmth, making excuses to get closer. Robin half-naked and framed in fur robes, asking Chrom if this is okay. Robin kissing him, and Chrom kissing back. This is like that, Gods forgive him. The Fell Dragon makes him remember first love.

“I wish you’d live through this,” Grima sighs into his mouth. “Imagine, me as your husband, you as my bride. Just the two of us, ruling this miserable planet together.” The question just seems cruel.

As if Chrom would hesitate to say yes.

With the sky like it is, the time is whatever anyone claims. Morning. Twilight. Noon. It’s all the same with the sun struck out, all apocalyptic vistas and swirling red clouds. In humanity’s final hours, everything becomes subjective.

This could be their wedding night.

Grima pulls back from Chrom to get a better angle, moaning and gasping with his teeth stained red. Naga’s blood on her worst enemy’s lips. Naga’s brand on the Fell Dragon’s altar.  A marriage consummated by outright sacrilege.

Grima rides Chrom like the world is ending and tells him, “Robin wanted to see you wearing a ring.”

Gods forgive him, Chrom doesn’t even try to pull out.

His vision goes spotty when he comes. For a moment he thinks it’s the end, that blowing his load struck him down where blood loss did not. What a fucking way to go that would be. Emmeryn dies a martyr and he croaks mid-ejaculation.

It’s a shame that’s not how it goes. Really. He should have died hereafter, before reality comes in to kick off its shoes. Grima his red-eyed god rises from the altar with semen-streaked thighs. His wings trail behind him; the train for tonight’s wedding gown, more elegant than any white lace. Body fluids and molting feathers instead of silk or satin. Chrom’s mortal wound is a melting pot of all the above.

“You don’t have long, probably,” Grima says. “If only you could get out some last words.”

Chrom realizes, suddenly, there’s a question he still hasn’t asked.

“Robin,” he gurgles. That single word, it’s worth the Herculean effort it takes.

“Oh.” Grima’s six eyes narrow to slivers. “Him. It doesn’t matter, but he was watching.” And that’s it, that’s the ground pulled out from under Chrom and oblivion eating him whole.

Robin, Robin who he loves more than anything, Robin who he’s lost forever, Robin whose heart he’s just broken; Robin was there, Robin is there, and they were so fucking close to a fairytale ending. Put a different man in the driver’s seat. Dredge Robin up from the mind he’s been drowned in. Just give them a do-over with Robin in control, and forget the part where Chrom ever wanted anything else.

He starts to work up to ‘I’m sorry’, but the space beside him is already empty. Robin’s coat lies in a heap nearby on the floor.

On the edge of the Dragon’s Table, loverlooking a world on fire, the lord of the Grimleal spreads his wings.

[starpunched]

and the sky opened up

written for a creative writing class. the prompt that this draws from was to dramatize an event in our lives involving a natural disaster or extreme weather. for lack of  experience with either of those things, i wrote about the platte river during an unusually wet summer.

To pull a four-wheeler out of its self-dug grave, you tie a chain between it and its brother. Start with the engine on low, and go straight backwards until something gives. If you’re lucky, you’ll only need to do this maybe once, twice a year, but that’s at least three rabbit’s feet worth of good fortune, and we’ve wasted ours on a respite from the rain.

The Platte River floods like it doesn’t want the attention, swelling big and full like a sore about to burst. We don’t get the cinematic side of things, the rolling waves and natural disasters and storms that soak down to bones. The wetlands absorb the overflow before it seeps too far south, drowning the bogs while the fields stay clean. Avoid the river, and you’ll hardly notice.

This year, we’re noticing.

Mom’s back inside checking weather channels, yelling out the screen door when predictions change. We’re all holding our breath for bad news; the rain is an old ex we don’t want to see, a vengeful bitch set on getting what’s hers. Grandpa says we don’t have long to wait. Two hours, maybe less, and then she’ll wash our four-wheeler out along with the rest of our crud. That is, unless we get there first.

My grandpa isn’t a righteous man. His faith is the utilitarian crudity of Christian boonies, of rednecks who curse at the sky when their truck loses a wheel. It’s something tactile, hard like a stone in his mouth. Checking the gas on our makeshift tow, he says how this year Nebraska’s God’s personal toilet, and the big man just won’t stop pissing. It’s funny, on the face of things. It’s the kind of crude humor you laugh at between class periods. The way my grandpa says it, though, he makes God pissing sound like biblical vengeance.

The Good Book is gospel down here, for real. They’re more aggressive about Jesus saving down South, but Grandma calls that pageantry at best; says that down South people only know God as cheap decoration. Window dressing for the soul. People here believe in God like they believe in death and taxes - unavoidable, insatiable absolutes. I’d bet money that somewhere out in these storms, a parishioner’s started building an ark.

Knee-deep in either mud or quicksand, Grandpa tells me that it’s a right shame for any kid my age to avoid things like this.

“All that energy,” he says, “all that energy in you kids and you don’t even want to tow a four-wheeler? The things people take for granted.”

He’s joking, if justified in wanting me to do more. My brother’s worked so hard he’d still be wet in dry sun, and my shoes are barely yet stained. I tell him I want to help, I promise. I tell him I’ll do whatever he needs me to. Truth is my heart’s not in it, as if that needs saying. There’s something about the mud this year, and I swear I’m not making this up, but it looks like it’s waiting for someone to drown.

The rain is an alchemist without the circles, I think. Dirt into mud, metal to rust, sometimes big magic that goes beyond drops of water. Sometimes she melts statues wholesale.

When I was a full foot shorter, the rain once dug a hole in the dirt we called a backyard. Deep and wide it was, filled with all the runoff that flowed east from the rest of the lot. Sizing it up from outside, my mom called it a puddle. It wasn’t that big, in retrospect, but I was small then like I am now, the travel size kind of a person. I jumped at it feet first, and the puddle swallowed me whole.

This mud isn’t so deceptive as that. No one would mistake this earthen molasses for a rainy-day pool, not if you gave them a blindfold and spun them backwards. My grandpa calls it a slurry; a pain in the ass that’s sinking his prized machines. It’s both him and my brother back there now, mud past their knees and them still striving to move this mountain. Me, I’m up front manning the tow, watching the clouds as they start closing in. Yeah, my shoes have stayed clean.

I did cross country this year. Most schools, they’d have to bus out to some farmer’s empty fields just for practice space, but not us. We sat in the green bowl of God, our campus an old brick building surrounded on by one long, circular hill. Like if someone turned a mountain inside out. I knew that hill better than my own mother; we all did. When it rained and our feet were pounding her back, her sides would run dark with watered-down soil. Gaia herself, weeping at our wasted effort.

See, we could have been doing something worthwhile. We could have been out sandbagging the roads, showing lost bikes to shelter – digging four-wheelers out of self-dug graves. You don’t realize how bad the rain is when it’s always flowing off into grates. We just didn’t think there was anything better to do than burn off the calories from prom night concessions. Vanity is a sin, Father, and I have much to confess.

To see nature full-force, what you do is you drive to a river – the real kind, the ones miles from cities and people, the ones carving the land as their own. Wait for rain. Wait for a flood. City kids from rich families don’t get that, not until they set out to change their minds.

Truth is, I’m selfish. I’m the villain in the bystander effect. Even knowing the score and the risks, I’m just wondering what could happen if we let things run their course. My grandpa, my brother, they’re up to their thighs in muck and past their limits, and the storm’s closing in soon. I’ve got the tow’s wheels spinning up chocolate but I’m going nowhere fast.  We need a miracle, or an extra push.

What happens is we get it out, but not by my intervention. I stay in my seat and eventually the four wheeler rises free of the dirt, like the resurrection of Christ on a small-town scale. The rain comes while we’re driving home; me behind my grandpa and thinking how it could have been worse. It ends just shy of us needing that ark.

[starpunched]

When you think of him, you think of the inch between his first two knuckles, split to the bone on your father’s jaw. You think of his gladiator frame, his shoulders the whole world, the blood in his teeth like communion wine. You think of him telling that man never to lay hands on you again. Your angry angel boy is avenging his religion. All that violence is like hell. It hurts your body because you are holy. Later, he whispers, it’s going to be okay. The stars above him wheel like ships lost on a horizon with no border. Burning miracles light years above two broken miracles. It’s strange, you think. How he believes you are god, but he rose you from the grave.

“Lazarus”, natalie wee (via natalieweepoetry)

[starpunched]

the space between galaxies

crossover ship fic for @galactocentric ! coran gets separated from the paladins and finds something beautiful on the edge of the universe. shoutout to star trek for teaching me how to be poetic when i talk about space wars.

They say that in space, no one can hear you scream. It makes sense, on a technical level. A traveler adrift in the cosmic sea will find no safe harbor for many light years, and no fellow wanderers to hear his voice. Loneliness will grow around him like vines.

It takes Coran four days to come to. He wakes in a void of stars, with no castle to be seen. Blood coats his helmet’s inside. His first reaction is the natural panic, programmed responses firing left and right, flooding his system with adrenaline, fear, anxiety — none of which can possibly get him home. He cries. There’s no one to chide him for it, so no use in stifling the urge. Yet even that proves pointless, leaving him with itching eyes and no way to dry them, and the front of his helmet coated with fog.

“Ach, you’ve really stepped in it this time,” he mutters, as if reminding himself will do any good. “Keep your head, lad, that’s it; you’re doing yourself no favors at all by flapping about like a headless chicken.” Breathe, breathe. That’s the first thing they teach you about keeping control.

But what does that do for him, really? Where does mastery of emotions leave you when the galaxies above and below hang cold and unfeeling? The stars won’t listen to his plight. Distant suns might deign to brighten the skies, but all they can do is burn.

Forgetting consequence, he almost thinks to cry again. As his eyes threaten to brim over, a drill sergeant’s voice reminds him that ‘you’re wasting moisture, boy!’ On his list of current dangers, dehydration ranks far higher than emotional distress. He forces down the waterworks. The cosmic sea goes silent.

He floats.

Time passes in disconnect.

After an a millennia of counted seconds, his heavy eyelids slide closed. Dreams come as blurred visions — he sees the castle, the paladins, the princess, all just out of his reach. He sees an army. He sees fire. Someone screams, too high pitched for himself or Shiro, and even in slumber he can’t help but call out. It’s his duty to keep them safe. It’s his fault when something goes wrong. The castle falls like a star collapsing, and Coran wakes with a cry on his tongue.

Are you lost?

—But not that one.  

He looks frantically for the voice’s source, a castaway searching for land, but here there are only dark voids and distant lights, and the dried blood on his visor hides even the stars. Speaking out occurs to him as a desperate last resort, but military programming sticks tight and he’ll be damned if he gives the enemy his location. There are prey species on faraway planets whose sole defense against the law of the jungle is to hold still and hope that the sharks pass them over. Trapped soldiers on enemy turf are almost the same, when they’re not lashing out at whatever comes close.

His breath slows. Something ripples in the cosmic sea.

I’m not going to hurt you.

The voice echoes in a space lacking acoustics, tinkling like bells, like starlight. It sounds like the galaxies themselves are smiling. Coran doesn’t trust it — that — whatever — for all the warmth in its contralto tones. The duties of a bodyguard are drowned in paranoia. At some point underwater, you have to learn to breathe.

“Show yourself! My grandad always told me not to trust things y’can’t see, and he’s never steered me all too horribly wrong yet!”

The lights of the heavens dim in unison as some unseen god releases a sigh.

I wish that I could. You are very, very far from your home, dear traveller; so far that even I can barely reach you.

He know there’s no reason to trust this faceless being — though who’s to say he hasn’t simply gone mad? Better men have lost their minds out here, the last vestiges of a good life lost slipped through their fingers like ribbons of sand. There’s no guarantee of company here; there's always a chance that he's only shouting into a void.

The silence between them is heavy. His imaginary friend is waiting for him to speak.

“...Who are you? Erm… what are you?”

The mother of stars, she sighs, as lonely as I am endless. My children shine more brightly than any, but they are all so distant and cold.

The universe herself has thrown him a lifeline.

“Oh,” he says, unsure of where exactly they go from here. “Well, sure is nice of a bigshot like you to lend an ear to a wayward vagabond such as myself. Gets real lonely out here in the sticks, doesn’t it?”

If invisible gods could blink in surprise, Coran is sure she’d have done just that. The dull hum of cosmic white noise takes on a somehow concerned tone.

...Do you not know where this is?

“Erm… No. Damned good life vests, these things, but not much in the way of navigation. That’s not bad, is it?”  

Oh, traveller, she says, pity dripping from the distant stars, you sit on the edge of the universe.

That is. Very bad.

“...Don’t jerk me around, Miss; it’s been a hell of a ride out here and I—”

I am sorry. Really.

Something buried swims to his throat, chokes him on his own despair. The mother of stars would have no reason to lie. Coran withdraws, pulling disbelief and horror back with the rest of him, a tortoise drawn into his shell. Like this, the jaws of the universe could swallow him whole. He wouldn’t mind.

‘You’re a fighter, aren’t you, boy?’ His sergeant’s voice plays back like a faded record. ‘You don’t give up until your sainted mother’s weeping on your grave!’ Coran’s mother is long-dead astral dust, for whom only he will mourn.

One. Two. In. Out. Learn to breathe again, one step at a time.

“Miss?”

I am here, traveller.

Coran’s voice shakes as he conjures up words. “I’m not going to make it out here much longer. Couldn’t even if I wanted to. This suit of mine’s been low on supplies for days.”

I…

There must be bravery in cutting off a goddess mid-sentence. “Y’don’t have to apologize, miss. Honest to goodness, I’m just glad to have your company.”

I wish I could give you more than that.

“Can I ask you a favor?”

Of course.

With silent apologizes to his late drill sergeant, Coran sees his white flag slip from his fingers.Struggles against impossible odds are only noble when you don’t fight the war alone. Out here, the only cause he has to abandon is that of his own survival. The military can preach about the glory of going out kicking and screaming, but Coran remembers when times were peaceful, when his grandmother told him to know when to quit.

“Stick around for a while, if you’ve got the time to spare. If I’m fated to bite the big one out here, I don’t want to do it alone.”

I can do that, she says, and he hears the sorrow of her distant galaxies.

She stays with him as he withers, cradling him in the arms of nebulas. She tells him of the universe before his birth; of her children, the ones she loved so dearly, each now nothing but far-flung lights. Her voice is a song, one he’s heard before in the background hum of the cosmos. Beautiful, as far as lullabies go. Almost heartbreaking as a funeral march.

Drift closer to me, she begs him as consciousness slips his grasp. Just a little further, and I can make you whole again.

“It won’t hurt, will it?” he asks through the haze of Death’s cloak.

Oh, darling, no, she murmurs. You will live forever in constellations.

He scoffs. “This ugly mug of mine decorating the night sky? I’d pity the astronomers that’d have to oogle that one.”

Doesn’t every man want to live forever? There’s a coy wisdom behind those words, and a bit of smugness too. He can’t lie to a being who’s had eons to learn how humans work.

“Well, we’re not always so vain about it,” he concedes. “I’ll tell you what. Make me one of your stars instead. Nothing fancy. Then you can hang me up in the heavens.”

The universe hangs its head, a smile matching her sad eyes.

I would have saved you if I could.

“I know.”

I hope your next life will be kinder.

He smiles faintly. It could be his imagination, but he could swear something is smiling back. “Come find me on my next go, alright? Meet me in space. We can make a day of it.”

Of course.

The cosmic sea laps at his feet and pulls him under, glittering and cold. All of creation is lit with stars, each welcoming him in turn. He kisses the universe, and she kisses him back, wrapping her arms around him as he turns to light.

Hell of a way to go, he thinks. Somewhere, he hears the star mother’s laugh.

[starpunched]

y'all really like watching me eat garbage i see

[starpunched]

uh hi here’s 300 words of guzma/lusamine that i wrote as a warmup for today’s round of actual work, please don’t actually read this

When engaged in things like this, you have to look the other person in the eye and think, real loud and clear: This is fucked. They will look back, they will affix you with the same gaze, and you will know that yes, this is fucked to a potentially cosmic degree, but at least we’re clear on that point. From there it’s just a matter of getting it over with. And it is fucked, you get that part, but when in your sweet life have you valued moral purity over personal satisfaction?

Shit, you can’t even look at her right now; she’s got you blindfolded and handcuffed to a wall sconce just so you’re forced to stand. It’s quiet enough that she might be gone, but you know she’d never miss a chance to watch you squirm. The woman is a fucking enigma wrapped in hairspray and Louis Vutton and that’s about the only thing you’ve pinned down.

(She asked you if you remembered your mother once, right before pouring hot wax over your erection. You, you’re too goddamn easy to read.)

You don’t know why you let her do this, actually. Ask Kukui about it and he’d give you referrals to at least six different therapists and one yoga studio if not a round dozen (“It’ll help with those old rages of yours, cousin, just give it a shot”). Fuck that. You don’t need some bitch in tight pants telling you where you carry your stress. Shoulders, brow, the part of your back that doesn’t straighten quite right; Madam Prez has those all pinpointed and marked for tough love. It helps, she says. Having all that stress gone, it takes years off of you just like that.

Botox does that too, you think, but you’re not looking to piss her off.

[starpunched]

their eyes pink and their spines white

Leaving your place open for passing strays does kind of make you susceptible to robbery, actually. Pretty sure that one's in the homeowner's manual. Down in the 'Common Fucking Sense' section, if you want go and look.

So really, you should have known better on this one.

40 minute flash fic for the prompt “guzma and nanu hang out” that ended up being absolutely not that at all, crossposted to ao3 for your convenience 

[starpunched]

their eyes pink and their spines white

i took a random fic prompt over on twitter as a cooldown for the day, here’s me absolutely cannibalizing the concept of ‘guzma and nanu hanging out’

[ contains implied/referenced child abuse, be warned ] 

You don’t consider yourself a collector of strays.

There’s enough evidence against you there for a jury to convict, but as far as you’re concerned it’s just civic duty. The least you can do with an empty police station is make use of your wasted space. You ripped a hole in the door the first night that you called this place your home, nailed a rubber flap over the cavity and waited for something to follow.

Usually, you wake to a cacophony of hungry mewls.

Sometimes you get a skinny kid clutching a pocketknife like he’s afraid it might cut and run.

You don’t think you know him, but in the intentional darkness of your living room it’s hard to say. Maybe this is karma, some part of you muses. Just goes to show, you should have opened a curtain.

The kid jabs his knife at your face.

“Are you a cop?”

He's can’t be much younger than eighteen; he’s got a head like a dandelion but his voice goes deep, and he’s tall enough to take you in a fight. But he’s still a teenager, young enough to be doing his trials — ah, yep. There’s that telltale flash of gold. You relax, if only because you're starting to take measure of his psyche.

“…Not really," you tell him. "This station hasn’t been operational for years.”"

The kid nods. His arm shakes as he keeps pointing the knife. There’s something in his other hand, held close to his chest, but it could be a backpack or a Bulbasaur for all that you can see.

“Yeah… yeah, that’s what I thought — so what the fuck are you doing here? Is this a stakeout?” His voice cracks twice as he forces the sentence out.

He’s scared.

Adulthood is usually beyond you, but you’ve got a brain that sort of works somewhere under your executive dysfunction and antidepressant stockpile. He needed a place to stay, and thought that this ruin fit the bill. Two and two make four. You’re not completely useless.

“Look,” you say, raising your hands in the symbol of the unarmed, “I just live here. Aether owns the town; they’re the ones you should be worried about. I’m only here because they offered me low rent on an empty station.”

No response. The blackness in the kid’s arms squirms.

“Okay.” Move slowly. Speak calmly. You’ve been trained firsthand in panicked meltdowns. “I’m going to reach over here and turn on a light. Nothing dangerous, I just want to know who I’m talking to. Alright with you?” This time you wait. It’s important that it’s his choice, not yours.

You count backwards from ten, like an astronaut waiting to be shot into space.

Nine.

Eight.

Seven.

Six.

Five.

“Yeah. Fine.” He motions for you to get on with it using the sharp side of his knife.

You reach over to what you’re calling a side table, the filing cabinet that you’ve filled with clothes and journals and a lamp in one open drawer. The light is old and the switch is stiff, but still it works just fine. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, though you don’t think it fits you that well.

The switch clicks, and a dim warmth fills the room. You wonder if this counts as your first meeting.

Without darkness to shroud him, the intruder seems more like a trapped animal than a looming threat, cornered and ready to bite. Dark, ugly bruises stain his arms, crosshatching mottled tapestries across his shoulders and scrawny wrists. He’s clutching a Wimpod in his free arm, the one that’s not outstretched and shaking, and his eyes are black pinpricks lost in the mess of his hair.

You wonder which of them is more afraid.

“Where’d you get those?”

He recoils as if you're spewing hot cinders. “Don't.” For a second, it looks like he's about to drop his knife. Maybe fall to his knees and retreat inwards, to spare his legs that burden.

You think he’s crying somewhere under his matted bangs.

Fuck.

There’s a reason you opted for self-isolation, okay? Emotional labor isn’t your bag, and your strays-turned-pets like it better out here than the city you came from. You can be a guide, a waypoint, but you’ve never wanted any more responsibility than feeding a hungry Meowth.

This kid, he’s lost too.

Your house was a station once.

“Stay here,” you tell him. “I can see those bruises fixed.”

--

[ ao3 crosspost here, leave your comments on that if you want to throw this humble clown a bone ]

[starpunched]

write each main character drunk off their asses please (i mean except for kid he probably sweats out the alcohol or something)

i would but i do NOT have the experience to do that as i personally can’t stomach the taste of alcohol in the slightest and as such i’ve never even buzzed and i don’t want to have textual evidence that i’m a straight edge weenie who has no idea what being drunk is like

as for kid, fun fact: it’s stated that kid’s shinigami body repels all ‘toxins’, preventing him from so much as dying his hair, so alcohol wouldn’t affect him at all! similarly, it’d be impossible for him to get a tattoo as his body would repel the tattoo ink, and he can’t be poisoned either. 

i can’t answer this prompt but i sure as heck can serve as an expert on shinigami biology if needed

[starpunched]

you were right that wasn't what i expected. Good Stuff though, thanks david

i do my best, thank u.... 

given that stein is someone who actively avoids emotional intimacy and strong bonds with other people i can’t really picture him wanting to be a father at all, and with the amount of internalized ableism he’s got going he’d DEFINITELY be worried about passing his schizophrenia down to any potential kid of his

so there’s your explanation for why that was so far from the initial prompt

[starpunched]

SON. BE NOT SADDENED/DISCOURAGED. I READ YOUR FICS, ALL OF THEM. THEY ARE GOOD. KEEP DOING YOUR BEST, IT IS A FINE ADMIRABLE BEST.

thank you !!

[starpunched]

can you write stein trying to be a dad? ty in advance if you choose to do this prompt

so there’s a fantheory i’ve seen that posits that stein is maka’s biological father and 1) this is based in that notion 2) this is absolutely not what you wanted i can guarantee it

By this point, it’s no longer his responsibility, a fact which comes as a marked relief. For most people, there would be a biological inclination towards parenthood making itself at home in their prefrontal cortex, but Stein retains an absolute lack of interest in the role he ought to be playing. 

He considers this to be the best outcome. Taking care of someone else requires an empathy and common sense that he never quite got, both in terms of understanding and acquiring. Metaphorically, he watched those seeds of emotional intelligence wither and die. Metaphorically, the ground was always infertile. 

Someone once told him that “this is your bed to lie in,” but Stein is a lifelong insomniac.

There are several factors to be accounted for when making a colossal fucking mistake. Logically, the mistake should have never been made, but lab goggles and chemical showers were not created to serve as window dressing. Stein is a scientist, and scientists know how little it takes for things to go wrong. This is where a contingency plan comes in handy.

Stein’s plan is to remove himself from the equation, and hope against genetic probability that something doesn’t go wrong.

“Everything’s fine,” Spirt assures him when he calls, his voice sounding like a cheap knockoff filtered through static. “I don’t see her much anymore-” Stein can hear the vice clamp snug around his throat. “-but she’d tell me if she had any… you know. I’ll tell you first thing if she does.” 

Stein gives a curt asseveration of assent and lets the line go dead in his hand. ‘Hallucinations’ is such a dirty word.

He’s done the math, of course. The odds of his schizophrenia being passed down are notably lower than either side of a coin toss, a bad bet if ever there was one. But even minute percent variations are considered statistically significant where academic study is concerned, and here he is with the glass one quarter empty. 

“I’m being paranoid, aren’t I?” he asks Azusa with no expectation of a response. The wind whips his remarks into cowed and distorted whispers. A balcony eight stories above a vast hill’s peak is an incommodious place to meet, but the journey up is primarily stairs, thus preventing him from arriving via ‘that one fucking chair.’

Azusa’s face is a marble stop sign. “Yes,” she says, dry and pragmatic. “But you know that you always are. I believe you called it ‘a symptom of a larger clusterfuck.’” 

“Fair enough. In that case, is my paranoia here justified?” 

“I would say so.”

The glass is not a quarter empty. The glass is three parts water and one part poison, and he only hopes that the toxins will sink to the bottom. 

Stein runs a hand through his bangs, his need for a shower slowly dawning on him as he does. “I thought so.”

“If nothing manifests by the time she’s eighteen, you can consider yourself in the clear,” Azusa says, blunt and to the point like classroom chalkboards. “If i’m being frank, however-”

“I’m Frank.”

“Don’t be facetious. She’s still your daughter whether she has your disorders or not. I’ve never understood why you don’t act like it.”

The conversation begins to feel like a costumed recital. There are deviations from the script in some places, and both actors habitually forget their own lines, but Azusa’s playbook is the same one read by Marie, by Spirit, by Sid. Stein can see where the pages are worn.

“Do you want a cigarette?” he asks.

Azusa is an inscrutable portrait behind her wire-framed mask. “I don’t smoke.”

“You don’t drink either,” Stein says, rummaging through the debris of his pockets, “but I’ve seen you do both. At the same time, once. I promise I won’t spoil your image.”

Azusa takes the stick that she’s offered. 

“If there’s anything you’re trying to get off your chest,” she says, choosing her words with the care of a politician, “you should take care of that soon. I leave Death City tomorrow, at which point you’re no longer my problem.”

Stein hands her his lighter. “I know.” 

That’s why he’s chosen to behave as her friend. Eighteen hours from now, Azusa will gate-check his baggage as she gets on her plane, and jettison it quietly halfway across the Atlantic. Azusa is a consummate neat freak, and she loathes holding on to useless things. 

They pause for a moment to watch the smoke curl into the breeze. The silence comes as break for commercials, buying time until the real draw resumes.

Azusa speaks first. “She is still your daughter, Stein.”

Stein sighs out a thick trail of smoke. “I didn’t raise her.”

“That was your choice.”

“And it was the right one. I wasn’t equipped to raise her.”

“Are you saying that Spirit was?” The name is uttered with the cadence of a curse.

In colloquial terms learned from late-night game shows, this is called a trick question. No, he wasn’t; he was unprepared and emotionally troubled. Yes, he was; the man was born with a paternal streak three cities wide. The host decides which is wrong. 

Stein presses his buzzer. “He’s done better than I would have. The last time I was responsible for someone, I tore them apart. Any judiciary would find me unfit as a parent.”

“Is that an insanity plea?” Azusa muses. 

“It’s a statement of fact.”

The commercials come back in a chorus of howling gale and tense silence. Stein can see his dark circles in her lenses. 

Thirty-eight seconds later, Azusa relents. “Believe what you want,” she says, putting her out cigarette on a bone-white railing. “You have a duty to that girl, just as I have a duty to this academy. We both have better things to be doing.” She turns on her heel with an automated precision, and abandons her role as armchair advisor. Stein doesn’t bother watching her go. 

She’s right, in a way, but the moral quibbles of parentage fall far from Stein’s purview. No one wants a father widely known to be mad. 

He rounds Maka’s grade up out of charity, and considers his duties done.

[starpunched]

ur writing inspires me and i just want u to kno that haha keep writing hun!

thank you !! the whole ‘keep writing’ thing is what i’m struggling with, hence the blog to try to motivate me to stick with it on a regular basis

i’m doin my best tho so good enough

[starpunched]

I wish you would write a fic where stein gets straight up dunked on in basketball (literal or not is up to you)

Send me an anonymous ask completing the sentence “I wish you would write a fic where…”

high school aus are for nerds let’s go summer camp 

In the grand scheme of things, an afternoon of eighty-degree weather barely qualifies as a hot flash on Mother Earth’s brow, but it’s hard to find the big picture comforting when your hand-me-down shorts have become pendulums from the weight of your sweat. 

“Shit,” Spirit says, lifting the sleeve of his standard-issue counselor’s shirt and letting it hit his skin with a wet slap. “I think I’m melting.”

Stein pushes his wire-frame glasses back into place for the umpteenth time. “Metaphorically, maybe.”

Spirit sighs, the noise somehow muffled by the summer heat. “We’re not even playing,” he continues, gazing forlornly at the dust kicked up by the pawns on the court. “I can’t figure how they’re all doing this! It’s like they’ve got some kind of secret defense against this heat and they won’t tell us their secrets.”

The dirt-patch playing field explodes into cheers as a free throw makes it mark. A trail of sweat inches its way down Spirit’s brow, its faint shine reflecting the orange ball’s course. 

“They’re kids,” Stein says bluntly. “ That’s where the energy comes from.”

“We weren’t like this when we were kids!“

Stein laughs with the dryness of borderline dehydration. “That’s true. But we were a pair of scrawny losers without an iota of athletic talent between us.”

It’s a statement of fact, not an insult, but Spirit’s cheeks momentarily match his hair for redness. “That’s not- I wasn’t that bad, was I?”

“Please.” Stein’s grin holds the same kind of patronizing insight as the fucking Mona Lisa. “You only beat me on account of me being ninety pounds of skin and bone back in high school.” 

“But I did beat you.”

“Once.”

“We only played once, and it ended with you giving me a concussion.” Spirit’s face flares up again, while Stein remains frustratingly unreadable. “Sometimes I wonder if I suffered any lasting damage from that hit, actually” 

Spirit’s plucked eyebrows cut a sharp arc as they lift skyward. “Really.”

“I mean, it would make sense, wouldn’t it?” The thin smile curves into the textbook definition of a shit-eating grin. “Brain damage would explain how willing I am to hang out with you.”

“Oh my god, fuck off.”

[starpunched]

I wish you would write a fic where Henry bonds with his darling son

Send me an anonymous ask completing the sentence “I wish you would write a fic where…”

“What about Bonescorcher?” Owain suggests. 

His father’s pallid face is hard to make out through the usual storm of black feathers, but from fleeting glimpses it’s possible to piece together a look of confusion. The “huh?” is barely audible over the flapping of unwashed wings. Owain doesn’t mind. In some ways the flock is like family, just as surreal to see alive as his own parents. Though his parents don’t always subsist on slain corpses. 

“For your weapon,” he explains, extending his arm as an old friend comes to roost. “Mother told me you haven’t affixed your tome with any sort of impressive title — appalling, by the way — and there’s no one in all the lands better suited to rectify this mistake than I!” The crow perched on Owain’s hand ruffles its feathers distastefully as he strikes a dramatically appropriate pose. Someday, when he had the time, Owain resolved to ask Laurent how such a small-brained creature had managed to develop scorn.

There’s a pause Owain takes as the hallmark of a man lost in thought. Or daydreams. He could never tell which. Then Henry shakes his head and the flock moves en masse, a vast halo expanding and contracting in reaction to sudden movement. 

“Hmmm, nah. Doesn’t suit me.”

Owain sighs, dislodging his unhappy companion as he puts his hands on his hips. “I’ve been mulling that one over all day, and you go and discard my magnum opus just like that? Aren’t parents meant to support their children’s endeavors? …And it was a good name, really.”

Henry’s laugh pierces his shroud, and Owain hears a piece of himself in his father’s voice. “No, no, it was great!” Henry assures him, enthusiasm genuine in the way of one pleased not to lie. “But it’s not right for me. See, I don’t do much bone scorching! Just plain ol’ death by dark magic. “

“Oh.” Owain’s shoulders slump. And just as quickly, he perks back up. “If it’s a more black-magicky title you’re after — what about Deathstriker?”

The smiles that Henry wears are rarely false, but they don’t often hold such pride. “Hey, that’s perfect! I should let you name all my tomes.”

Owain gapes. “You have more? And you haven’t named any of them?”

“Oh boy.”